Recent developments in hardware miniaturization and integration technologies have enabled a new class of embedded systems comprising devices equipped with various sensors that interact with the surrounding environment. These systems are highly decentralized but interconnected via various communication links to form a network. This structure represents a Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN), which comprises an ambient intelligent environment with an infrastructure based on heterogeneous sensor devices and actuator devices accessible over a wireless or wired network. An ambient intelligent environment is one in which humans are surrounded by computers and networks unobtrusively embedded in their environment. Generally, ambient intelligence assumes ubiquitous computing, unobtrusive hardware that is part of our environment, a seamless communication environment, a distributed network and context awareness of the user. The USN includes sensor nodes that manage real-time information obtained by electronic transducers that sense the surrounding environment and that have the capability to communicate via a display or other electronic data communication mechanisms. Examples of these mechanisms include the following standards: IEEE-488.2, Fieldbus standard2, IEEE 1451, IEEE 802.11, Bluetooth and zigbee.
In a typical USN the data collected and stored by the sensor node is intermittently transferred by other network nodes or sensor nodes toward a static control center, which is referred to as a sink. The main issue associated with this approach is energy usage. Those nodes, which are closest to the sink, will be transferring not only their own data but the data from multiple other sensor nodes toward the sink, thereby using more energy for data transfer.
A mobile terminal may access sensor nodes in a USN. However, users currently utilizing such a mobile terminal would currently receive data only via a pre-programmed, embedded air interface standard with specific data management application software.
Various mobile terminals provide wireless data access using certain standards such as Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) and Bluetooth. These standards can be used to connect to other devices. For example, a mobile terminal can connect to a sensor node via a Bluetooth channel thereby forming a tunnel through which communication can occur or through which communication can be directed to other networks such as the Internet. This approach adds considerable cost and energy consumption to the sensor nodes as well as complexity to the overall network.
Utilizing HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Object Exchange (OBEX) and Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) functionality, which are known in the art, the mobile terminal can provide a user with a capability to access and browse different networks. These protocols, however, do not provide the user interface for display of, or utilization of, data from a sensor node. Furthermore, current architectures for data access from a sensor node require that the user access a server. This approach suffers from the need to develop an application that is capable of communicating with devices connected to the server. Dependent on the devices connected, the server must be able to receive, for example, sensor data, configuration data, alarms, and the like. Furthermore, such a server includes hardware that enables such communication capability. As such, a customized access infrastructure must be built, which is a costly and cumbersome process.
Web services are invoked in the mobile terminal protocol stack by means of industry-standard protocols including SOAP, XML, OBEX and HTTP. A Dynamic-Link Library (DLL) is an implementation of a shared library in one operating system. It provides the standard benefits of shared libraries, such as modularity. Modularity allows changes to be made to code and data in a single self-contained DLL shared by several applications without any change to the applications themselves. This basic form of modularity allows for relatively compact patches. Another benefit of the modularity is the use of generic interfaces for plug-ins.
Sensor nodes are typically battery based and as such are very power restricted for data collection, storage and transfer. Access to the data can occur through either the sensor network itself, which is power inefficient for data transfer or for the more energy friendly transfer associated with mobile terminals that collect and sink the sensor node data. In typical USNs the data collected by a sensor node is transferred via other sensor nodes or network nodes to a static control center (sink). Those nodes closest to the sink transfer not only their own data but also the data from sensor nodes that are located at a greater distance from the sink and thus use more energy for the data transfer process. The problem associated with sending data from sensor node to sensor node is that sensor nodes closer to the control center will have to shuttle data from sensor node farther away from the control center to the control center, which consumes far more power. When these closer sensor nodes run out of power the entire network is essentially non-operable.
Therefore, what is needed is a system, method, and computer readable medium that overcomes the limitations and complexities described above.